Sweet Starfire

Already he was pushing her backward onto the bed.
    “Watch out for Fred,” Cidra said.
    “Where is he?”
    “I don’t know. He’s usually in here somewhere.”
    Severance looked up and saw three rows of teeth grinning at him from the window ledge above the bed. “Hello, Fred. Go back to sleep.”
    The three rows of teeth winked out of sight. Severance gathered Cidra into his arms. He heard her soft sigh, felt the warm, eager welcome in her arms, and wondered how he could let her go in the morning. Then he stopped thinking of the future entirely. All that existed for him was the present with its promise of passion and satisfaction. On Renaissance a man took what he could get.
    He made love to Cidra with the burning need of a man who knows he’s going to go hungry for a long time.
    Severance didn’t know what brought him up out of sleep later that night. He came awake the way he usually did on Renaissance: with a sudden alertness that kicked his system into full gear. He lay listening to the shadows, unmoving. One arm was wrapped securely around Cidra as if even in his sleep he were afraid of losing her. Her rounded rear was nestled intimately into his thighs, and he could feel the curves of her breasts under his palm.
    But it hadn’t been Cidra who had awakened him. She was sound asleep. He listened intently, and then he heard a faint movement on the window ledge. Fred was awake too. Perhaps he had only heard the sound of his movement. The rain had begun, pouring down outside with enough force and noise to mask any sounds from the street. Severance wondered if it had been Desma’s return to the house that had brought him up out of sleep. But he could hear nothing from the hall.
    Then he heard another sound, and this time he recognized it: the hiss of a deflector screen as a man moved through it. The faint noise was coming from the deflector that guarded the window across the room, Severance slitted his eyes and turned his head a few fractions of a centimeter. A shadow moved on the other side of the diazite pane. On the window ledge over the bed Fred shifted again.
    Severance reached up and touched the rockrug. Fred went still, his body still and alert. Satisfied that the creature was going to obey the silent command, Severance reached for the knife in his utility belt. Logically, whoever was outside the window shouldn’t be able to open it. The diazite was locked. But there were ways around locks. Too many ways.
    Severance wasn’t very surprised when the diazite pane swung inward without a sound. The figure coming through the window was holding a pulser. He got no more man one leg hooked over the windowsill. Severance came to a sitting position in a smooth rush of movement, launching the knife in his hand with the full power of his shoulder and upper arm.
    The heavy-duty utility knife caught the intruder in the right side of his chest. The pulser dropped to the floor as the victim yelled in pain and rage. The force of the blow sent him spinning backward, out of the window and onto the ground.
    “Severance!” Cidra came awake with a startled gasp, clutching at the sheet. Rain was pouring through the open window. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
    But he was already out of bed and leaning out of the window. An instant later he was through it and crouching on the ground outside. Cidra heard Fred moving agitatedly on the ledge above her, and then she felt him undulating down onto her shoulder and along the bed. He was moving almost as fast as Severance had moved. The rockrug crossed the room and wriggled onto the other window ledge. Cidra wasn’t far behind both of them.
    “Severance? What are you… Sweet Harmony, it’s him!” She stared at the man lying flat on the ground in the pouring rain. Severance was hunkered down beside him, his nude body gleaming sleekly from the steady downpour. “It’s him,” she said again, dazed. “The man who attacked Desma and me in the lab.”
    Then she saw the blood mingling with the rainwater that was running down the man’s chest. The hilt of the utility knife protruded from his rumpled clothing. She caught her breath. “Is he… is he dead?”
    “No. My aim was a little off. It’s hard to get an accurate shot from a sitting position. Especially when you’re in a hurry.” Severance was examining his victim. “You’re sure it’s the same renegade?”
    She stared at the stricken man, whose face was twisted in a grimace of pain. It was an expression that